She can’t, he realized. They can influence, but they can’t command. If they could, Diamond would never have made it to the cave and given me the mask. She wasn’t lying when she said that gods feed on belief. Only belief would allow them to return to the world of the living. And in return for that belief, she was offering choices Stephen had never thought he would have.
It was a hard bargain, but a good one. A new world, Stephen thought.
Hello, Rebus. Stephen felt a tickle as the ant crawled into his ear canal and settled there. Taking my name in vain?
Chalchihuitlicue frowned and looked closely into Stephen’s face. “You have much to think about, Stephen Bishop. If you would be citizen rather than slave, you know what you must do. Belief begets enemies. Do not forget that. Other voices will attempt to dissuade you from your cause.”
She laid a palm flat over his heart. “Go now, and choose.” The sun dropped below the horizon, and no stars came out in the sky.
Steven was chilled and stiff when he opened his eyes to the silent blackness of Mammoth Cave. He rolled off the altar stone, smelling the fading odor of strange flowers but hearing no voices. The lamp clinked as his foot brushed against it, and he lit it, grateful for its small illumination.
I’m still in the land of the dead, he thought. Far from the sun and listening for dead voices.
He wanted to breathe a living scent, to see the sun and lay his hand on Charlotte’s sleeping body. Hate welled up in him, for gods who needed blood and men who took their living from his body. In Monrovia, would the sun shine as it did in Tlalocan? It didn’t matter. Nick had been right all along. Croghan would never free him. Stephen would die in Kentucky, or be sold down the river when he was too old to guide in the cave. He would never see Africa.
Stephen’s ear tickled again, and he remembered the ant. Think on this one question, Rebus, John Diamond’s voice said softly in his mind. Will things be any better if you let Tlaloc out into the sunlight?
Not answering, Stephen dug the ant from his ear and crushed it between shaking fingers.
Toxcatl, 2-Flower—March 21, 1843
A torch burned along Maudie’s starboard rail, illuminating the forward deck and the overgrown shore of the cove where they’d anchored for the night. In the flickering light, the Ohio River gleamed like a pool of oil and the lean-to’s shadow blotted out the captain’s chair, where Delbert Gatty slumped in a rare good-humored drunk.
“Tell us a tale, Archie Prescott.” Gatty’s voice wound slowly around the words and drifted out over the river. “Midnight’s tale-telling time. How did you come to be divorced from the rest of your ear?”
“Hear, hear. That ought to be good for a bedtime story.” Rufus was sprawled on the cabin roof. He lifted his head to drink and let it fall with a thunk back to the weathered shingles.
Archie had a jug of his own, nearly empty now. Before boarding Maudie, he hadn’t imbibed since his last night working for Belinda, but right then he was wondering why he’d bothered with temperance at all. Days on the river quickly lost their novelty, and for long hours corn mash was all that made the boredom bearable. Corn mash, and stories—Gatty and Rufus spent nearly every waking hour swapping improbable tales of their river exploits. “Tapering off,” they called it. Whenever the boiler was filled and the two stokers (whom Gatty, for some inscrutable reason, called Punch and Judy) had a free moment, they retired to the stern, where they drank their wages and bantered with Alfonse about Creole women.
After four days aboard Maudie, Archie was beginning to understand the Eastern stereotype of the riverman. When they worked, they worked hard, harder than Archie ever had for Bennett—loading and unloading cargo or taking on firewood. And they worked in all conditions, including a driving hailstorm that had come roaring up the river valley the day before. What that had been like for the three slaves, Archie couldn’t even begin to imagine. He had made himself look at the welts on their faces and hands, made himself imagine the smack and sting of the hail.
Why do I feel guilty? he wondered. After all, I didn’t buy them, or write the slavery laws. Then he thought of Udo, saying This is what I can do, and he said to himself Yes, I understand. By not opposing it, I have allowed this to go on.
Maudie made maddeningly slow progress down the river. Four days, and they hadn’t yet passed the mouth of the Little Kanawha River in western Virginia. Gatty stopped at every speck of a town peeking from the Appalachian forests, dropping a crate here, a barrel there, and trading when he could. Archie chafed at the pace. For all he knew the chacmool had already hidden Jane where he would never be able to find her in the twelve days remaining. At this rate, he would have been better off on horseback, even if he had to buy a fresh mount at every town.
But Tamanend had said to travel by water. Well, old man, Archie thought irritably, if I’m late to the party because I heeded your advice, I’ll be spending the summer bear hunting in western Pennsylvania.
Archie lay back along the port rail near the bow, to block himself off from the torchlight while he watched the stars. That was one of the real prizes of river life, stargazing. The sky blazed with streaks and clouds of light; since seeing the night sky on the river, Archie had understood what Tamanend meant when he said numberless as the stars.
Centzon Mimixcoa. The Four Hundred Northerners. It seemed he’d heard someone say that in a dream.
“I seen Mike Fink bite the ear off a Frenchman, once,” mused Rufus, snapping Archie out of his tipsy woolgathering.
“That so?” Gatty said. “Was it Mike Fink did your ear? Come on, Archie, out with it.” He banged his jug on the deck.
“Not much to it, I guess,” Archie said. Not much he wanted to tell, at any rate. Living mummies and Mexican gods weren’t exactly standard fare in rivermen’s tall tales.
“There was a dwarf named Charlie, but everyone called him the Geek,” Archie began. “I had a—a dispute with his friends. Wrong place at the wrong time, really. Three of them caught me where I wasn’t supposed to be one night and …”
And that was it, really. Those were the facts of the situation. But storytelling wasn’t about facts, Archie knew that much. If he was ever going to get Bennett to listen, he would have to do better than that.
“Where you wasn’t supposed to be?” The captain’s chair creaked as Gatty sat up straighter. “Where was this?”
“New York.”
“New York? New York? How’d you come to be in New York?”
“Born there,” Archie said. He downed the last of the whiskey and tossed the jug over the side. After swallowing, he finished. “This was before I came to the river.”
“Well, shit.” Gatty sounded disgusted. “You ain’t half the alligator-horse I thought you was. Got your ear bit off by a midget in New York.”
“I seen a midget in St. Louis once,” said Rufus. “Don’t remember his name, but I think he was in the circus.”
“New York,” Gatty snorted. “We got us an Easterner on the boat.” He struck a match and lit the stub of a cigar. “I thought you was rough when you didn’t blink at Maudie’s name, but now I see you’re just ignorant. Well, let me tell you something, Easterner. There’s three ways to curse a boat: name it for a woman, have six letters in the name, and start with an M. This boat’s all three. Only white man crazy enough to serve on her is Rufus, and that’s only because he’s too drunk to be cursed.”
And I’m too cursed to get drunk, Archie thought. The jug of mash had just sandpapered his nerves and made him sleepy. Above the river, the Centzon Mimixcoa trooped past a gibbous moon hung in the treetops on the Ohio bank.
“You don’t believe in curses, Captain?” he said.
” ‘Course I believe in ‘em. Them niggers at the tiller believe in ‘em, too—they’d jump in a minute if I didn’t shackle ‘em. One of ‘em did, shackles and all, just upriver from Cairo. Sank his nappy head like a cannonball. Hell yes, I believe in curses.
“But here’s my secret: no damn curse in the world will t
ouch me. I’m crazier than a voodoo man, crazier than the Devil himself. Lady Luck pisses her drawers when she hears my name. That’s why I don’t fear curses. I could name this boat God and the Old Man himself wouldn’t have the balls to strike me down.”
Gatty blew the ash off his cigar, the sudden glow of the coal showing Archie that the good humor had completely drained from his face. “You think on that, Eastern man. Think on that before you get ideas about jumping. I’d hate to have to shackle a white man.”
A clanging bell woke Archie the next morning. Each peal drove a spike into his head, reminding him of one reason he hadn’t missed drinking. There was no bell on Maudie’s deck, though. Where was the racket coming from?
He stood, wincing at a deep ache in his thigh from sleeping in the cold. The bell was coming from upstream. Looking in that direction, Archie noticed that the riverbanks had closed in. He could easily have thrown a rock into the brush on either side.
“Man your pole and watch for snags,” Rufus called from his rooftop perch.
“Where are we?” Archie took up his position in the bow, wishing death on whoever was ringing the damned bell. He nudged aside the canvas covering a stack of crates and saw that his valise was still where he’d left it. Whether it had been tampered with he couldn’t tell, but he would have to wait for a more opportune moment to check.
“Little Kanawha,” Gatty said. He looked as if he’d spent the night slouched in the straight-backed captain’s chair. “Big river’s fifteen miles back.”
“Kentucky yet, or still Virginia?” Archie called over the sharp hiss of Maudie’s boiler venting steam, but Rufus didn’t answer. The boat slowed to ease around a tight bend, Alfonse putting his entire weight into holding the rudder all the way left, and a large whitewashed Colonial house came into view on the right, standing on a hill overlooking the river. An acre or more of lawn had been cleared around it, and a stair cut into the steep slope between the front door and the river. The stair ended in a stubby dock, too short to reach into water Maudie could negotiate.
Two boys, both rangy and strapping with white-blond hair, took the stairs three at a time, leaping like goats onto the dock and untying a weatherbeaten rowboat. Above and behind them, a man appeared from the house, obviously the boys’ father. He hailed the Maudie and Gatty shouted hello in return.
“My cabinetry at last!” the man said, coming down the stairs. He limped as he descended, placing his good leg firmly on each log step before continuing. “I kept my boys home from Sabbath services expecting you.”
“Drop anchor, Archie,” Gatty said. “We can’t get no closer.” He cut off the throttle and rummaged through his pockets. “What do you mean, at last, Marlon? It’s only the twenty-second. Christ, the river’s only been clear two weeks.”
“No offense, Delbert,” Marlon said. “I’m just eager to furnish my home. Rivermen don’t feel that, I suppose.”
“Hell, you haven’t seen my house in New Orleans. Teak-wood furniture inside and out. I know houses.” Gatty stepped up next to Archie in the bow, unfolding a stained sheet of paper. “Says right here ‘on or before the twenty-seventh,’ ” he muttered.
Archie pushed the butterfly anchor off the deck and watched the rope uncoil and stiffen as the anchor bit into the riverbed and brought Maudie to a halt. The bell had stopped, but he still had a vengeful headache, and that combined with the pain in his leg put him in a foul mood. Gatty had said nothing about side trips up into the Virginia hills, and this excursion would waste half the day while Jane was taken farther away from him.
And, to top it all off, the chacmool’s talisman had been inert since Archie’s encounter with Tamanend—ten days now. Either the chacmool was completely inactive, which seemed unlikely, or contact with the Lenape chief had blinded Archie somehow.
Or, he thought, Tamanend was just wrong, and the talisman is simply a bull’s-eye for the chacmool to sight in on. But us foot soldiers never find out about things like that until it’s too late.
And that was it, really. Archie had been somehow chosen by the Lenape, either because he was Jane’s father or for some more incomprehensible reason. He was their latest conscript in their ancient war with the Mexican gods. Well, I never asked to be a soldier, Archie thought. I just want my daughter back. I want off this boat and I want my daughter back.
The rowboat bumped into Maudie’s hull and a thrown rope fell across Archie’s forearms. “Hold that fast,” Gatty said, folding the contract back into his coat pocket.
One of Marlon’s boys vaulted onto the deck. “Where’s the box with the mirror?” he said, his voice high-pitched and wound tight with anticipation. “I want that one first!”
His brother docked the oars and stood in the boat, watching as Gatty peeled the canvas back from the bow cargo. “Right here somewhere,” Gatty said. “Been carrying your load since Cincinnati, but Little Kanawha was still froze up when I passed on my way east.”
“Sure was,” the boy in the boat nodded. “First boat of the year was Milt Crowe, and that was just yesterday.”
“Milt Crowe?” Gatty jerked as if he’d been shot, and a flush rose from his collar like mercury in a thermometer. “That Hoosier was here?”
“Yup. He went on upriver. Said he’d come back through today.”
“Jesus bugger his Hoosier head!” Gatty looked as if he wanted to run in several directions at once. He stomped in a tight circle, spitting a string of unintelligible curses.
Coming back around to face Archie, he poked a thick finger into Archie’s chest. “Crates are stamped MacGruder. Get ‘em off my boat so’s we can move. You, Punch and Judy!” he shouted. “Get that boiler hot! Soon as I see that devil Crowe we’re gonna race, and I mean race.”
The stokers jumped to their task, tossing wood into the fire by the armload and working the poker as if they were enraging a bull before letting it into the ring. Gatty stomped back to the starboard rail and leaned out over the water, his bulldog face almost exactly the color of cranberry sauce. “Marlon! What was that damned Hoosier selling?”
Marlon had reached the dock. He stood with his arms folded, his weight shifted away from his bad leg. “Tobacco, mostly. I bought cigars and a dozen tins of pipe leaf.”
“From him? We had a damned contract!” Gatty whipped the paper from his pocket again and waved it in the air.
“Only for the furniture, Delbert. I ordered tobacco from you because you said you’d be first through this year.” Marlon shrugged. “You weren’t.”
Gatty stormed into the cabin and slammed the door behind him. Archie could hear him howling inside, and Rufus dropped down to the deck, shaking his head and laughing as he made his way forward.
Archie found a MacGruder stamp on a flat square crate like a table leaf. He handed it to Marlon’s son. “This one ought to be the mirror,” he said.
“Boy, I guess,” the boy said, taking the crate as if he were cradling an infant. “I’m gonna polish it every morning.” He lowered the mirror to his brother, who laid it flat across the rowboat’s gunwales. Rufus cast him off and he rowed the few yards to the dock.
Archie pushed the next crate to the rail. “Say, Rufus,” he said. “Who is this Crowe?”
Rufus wheezed. “He’n Delbert raced once, out below Cairo, Illinois. Three years ago, I guess. He had Delbert clean beat but hit a snag and sunk his boat. Delbert claimed he’d won, but everybody knew better, and folks let him hear it up and down the river. I reckon Delbert’d sell his mother in Araby to beat Milt Crowe in a race.”
Gatty reappeared, snarling smoke from a fresh cigar. “God damn it, Archie,” he growled, “I’ll pay that midget to chaw off your other damned ear if any of this MacGruder shit is still on board when Crowe comes around that bend. Get to it!” He spat on the deck and climbed onto the cabin roof, glowering out over the Little Kanawha.
With Archie and Rufus loading the skiff, and Marlon’s two boys unloading, the transfer was completed in ten minutes. Gatty said not a word, only glared at
Archie and then back to the river, as if he expected Milt Crowe to steam by at full speed if he turned his back. “About goddamn time,” he said from the cabin roof, as the last MacGruder crate nearly swamped the overloaded rowboat. “Haul anchor and let’s turn around. I’ll give that bastard Hoosier the surprise of his sonofabitching life.” Dropping back down to the deck, he sat in his chair and rammed open the throttle.
Maudie surged forward just as Archie, with Rufus’s help, yanked the anchor free of the bottom. At the same time, a whistle sounded from upstream.
Gatty leaped out of his chair at the sound. “Alfonse,” he shouted, “goddamn your nigger hide, turn this boat around!”
“Hold a minute, Delbert!” Marlon called from the dock. “I don’t have the pegs and nails.”
“What? Damn you, Archie, get the box of damned pegs!” Gatty flung his cigar at Archie. It missed by feet and flew into the river.
Archie stopped in the middle of recovering the cargo and searched frantically for a last MacGruder box. He found it between the port rail and a row of whiskey barrels and held it up as Milt Crowe’s whistle sounded again, much closer this time.
“Throw it over the side!”
Archie turned toward the captain’s chair, thinking He can’t be serious, arid looked directly down the barrel of Gatty’s revolver. “I mean now,” Gatty said.
The box weighed at least ten pounds, but Archie heaved it as far as he could in the direction of Marlon’s dock. It splashed in the shallows and the two blond boys jumped into the water after it.
“See if I—” Marlon was shouting, but Archie lost the rest of the words and very nearly fell into the river as Maudie lurched violently to port. A barrel of whiskey toppled and crashed through the rail on that side, followed by the forward part of the stacked firewood. Logs boomed against Maudie’s hull as the boat completed her turn, just as Milt Crowe’s own single-wheeler came churning around an upriver bend.
“Ahoy, Delbert!” Crowe gave a great joyous wave as his boat came within shouting distance, a gap-toothed smile splitting the black tangle of his beard. “Care for a jaunt this fine morning? I’ve got this beautiful new boat, and I haven’t yet seen what she can do.”
Alexander C. Irvine Page 24
